MHEG-5 – The Future and the Benefits

MHEG-5 has an extremely bright future and is constantly being developed within its overall public standards framework. The latest version was submitted for ETSI approval in Q4 2009, including full HD capabilities and the IP-based MHEG Interaction Channel.

MHEG-5 is both cost-effective and technologically efficient. It is highly focussed on the task at hand – that is, being a system for TV interactivity. It carries no baggage and it occupies a small amount of “space” in the receiver to handle those applications that are specifically designed to enhance the TV experience. It benefits from a lightweight user interface and it is powerful enough to provide sophisticated interactive services.
Including an MHEG-5 1.06 engine is an incidental cost for receiver manufacturers due to the modest memory and CPU requirements. This is a minimal cost increase in comparison to rolling out “zapper” boxes while enabling the widespread rollout and adoption of a broad range of interactive services.

MHEG applications are also very bandwidth efficient. The complete BBCi service - which is a very popular feature-rich interactive application on Freeview UK - is transmitted using an average bit rate of 700kbit/s, where the majority of bandwidth usage depends on the size and compression potential of the graphical elements. Also, the entire Freeview NZ seven-day EPG is transmitted within 256Kbit/s.

Using a standards-based approach allows multiple vendors to supply into markets, both at the headend and receiver level. This provides significant competition and that drives down cost while improving performance. It also increases the availability of broadcast, authoring and application tools. MHEG-5 of course allows set-tops to be sold on a per-operator or per-country basis while it also slots into the iDTV sales model by allowing regional integration and sales. Several leading iDTV manufacturers include MHEG-5 receivers in all TVs that they sell in Europe.